The Decision to Have Sophie

I was talking with Matt Strikwerda, a colleague and friend of mine, at school today.  We were watching  A Bad Lip Reading - Mitt Romney, (also check out A Bad Lip Reading - Twilight Edition) and we were losing our minds laughing about it.  Seriously I could barely breathe.  Watch them, then come back to reading this blog if you want. (You probably won't because you will just keep watching Bad Lip Readings. So pick it up right here in about a half an hour or so.)  Matt is gold, he came to our staff a year ago, and we have a similar sense of humor and taste in music and all that.  Anyway, somehow we ended up talking about babies (he and his wife have a 4 month old) and it brought back the memory of when Krista and I had decided to have a third child.

I had always thought that if I had kids I would have two kids and that would be that.  I suppose I really had enjoyed my family life growing up, and my parents just had my sister and I, and it worked out awesome in my opinion so I figured why would I mess with a good thing?  Krista had always wanted three.  She couldn't explain why she wanted three kids, she just had it in her.  I remember a couple of years after Grace was born that Krista would bring up the topic of having a third and I would get rattled immediately.  I resisted this desire of hers for a long time. Sometimes she was upset with my opinion, and other times she was in agreement, (and I thought I had won) but it would always come back up.

I remember at one point she was ready to just give it up, she couldn't fight against me anymore, she would resign herself to the fact that we weren't on the same page and would be o.k.  Eventually.  I could feel something die in her that day.  One of her dreams was being snuffed out by the man who she loved and it I'm being honest I didn't feel good that she finally understood my side and that I was home free.  I felt horrible. She wasn't guilt tripping me either. (I think all guys out there can distinguish between an attempted laying on of a guilt trip and true hurt if they're really being honest.)   I knew in my heart that it was more than disagreement.

Krista and I were randomly talking with our pastor, Ian Lawson after church or something and the topic came up.  I made plans to hangout with Ian without Krista to discuss children and other stuff about life further.  I remember him saying to me, "If you go out for coffee with me, I bet you'll have more kids."  Ian has 5 kids. A few days later we met for coffee at the Tim Hortons in the northside Wal-Mart in Lethbridge. Now, I want everyone to understand that Pastor Ian never brainwashed me with some Christian pastor/Jedi mindtrick or something.  What ended up happening, is that I knew that I would have to express my feelings about not being comfortable with having more kids to someone who was not my wife.  Accountability for your thoughts is an interesting thing. I started listing the reasons that I knew I would be talking to Ian about and they went something like this:

1.  Kids are expensive. - this is true, but lifestyles can sometimes be changed to accomodate extra costs.  Translation - I might have to sacrifice some of the things I liked in order to afford it.  Sacrifice.

2.  Babies don't sleep awesome and I don't want to go back to that stage. - Grace and Jaxon were sleeping through the night for a couple of years by then and I didn't want to revisit those tiring days in the first year or so. - Translation - I might have to sacrifice some sleep.  Sacrifice

3.  Grace and Jaxon were getting to the age that they were starting to become individuals, they weren't toddlers, and we could probably start doing things that are doable with two young kids, (trying skiing, starting to bike as a family soon (without a chariot) etc.) but not with two kids and a baby.  - Translation - I did not want to make the effort to figure out ways that we could try some of these things with a baby.  - I was shortsighted on Sacrifice.

4.  Babies need to be carried around and changed and stuff, and that's annoying.  - Translation - I'm lame.  Oh, and I didn't want to Sacrifice. (I had to put it again so that it followed the pattern, making a very clear point that sacrifice is important.(Inner dialogue - wait, I shouldn't put that in brackets because that's your main point in the next paragraph you fool!))

Now I don't know if you caught the main point of my points that I was going to tell Ian.  They were great points except that they pretty much all indicated to me that I was being selfish and was not willing to sacrifice. I hadn't even met with him yet and I was already realizing that I was short on wisdom. 

If you have big decisions to make in your life I hope you have someone that you respect that has been through some stuff that you can bounce ideas off of.  It helps you clarify your thinking.  Don't go to someone who you feel is a buddy who is going through the same things, they probably don't know much more than you.  Go to someone who you trust who you are forced to give the straight goods too, and who will call you on your inconsistencies.  It's one of the best ways to evaluate your decision making.

So I realized, before, and after meeting with Ian that I needed to change my tune.  It's serious business when your own fears and selfishness affect the person you love.  To be totally honest, I knew that my fears hurt Krista because she had always wanted three kids and I think all wives hope their husbands truly see their hearts desires.  That they truly know them, to their soul.  I'm not exaggerating when I say that I knew I had hurt Krista's heart when I said I didn't want more kids.  I had listened to her talk about it, but I hadn't really heard her.

I came home and that night told Krista that I really had thought about it and that I wanted to have three.  She was a bit excited, a bit confused, and a bit ticked off. I'm paraphrasing here but the general source of the ticked offness could be expressed like this "Why didn't you just listen to me Jared? Why did it take going out for coffee with someone else to make you understand my soul? Etc."  She was right.  Krista you were right, I already told you that a bunch of times, but I'll say it again, you were right.

She was pregnant basically right away, I even remember her telling me a month after, "I'm pregnant." and me being excited, but sort of bitter because I had secretly hoped that it would take a couple of months of "trying".  She looked at me and said, "Seriously? You aren't super excited because you wanted to have more sex?"  Me "Well when you put it like that it sounds like a pretty dumb thing to think..." (can't remember exactly what I said, but that's the gist of it...)  Just because I write a blog does not mean I am a smart man. (the women reading are like, "You are such an idiot, I have lost all respect for this dummy."  The guys reading are like, "Dude, I get it, but you are not a smart man.")

Anyway, the next 8 months went by and Soph was born.  I honestly have never regretted the decision to have Sophie.  She is the product of the love that Krista and I had, a miracle of God, a joy to my life and all who know her.  The last year of our marriage was great.  There are no regrets in that, and I am so thankful to God for that last year.

The day before Krista was taken to the hospital, two days before she died, we brought Sophie home.

I'm crying now as I write this.  One of the most cherished memories I have was that shortly after this, Krista and I were in the kitchen and I could tell that she was a little rattled.  She asked me in a what-were-we-thinking tone "Are you sure you're o.k. with this?"  She was worried about what the future would hold for us. "Could we do this?", "How are we going to do this?" were the questions I am sure that were going through her mind.  Without hesitation, I said, "Yes!  This is awesome, I am so excited Krista." I wasn't just saying it to encourage.  I was sure.  I was excited.  We had a hug in our kitchen that I can still feel when I think of it.  It's like it permeated me, I felt it through me.  We were one.  We were on the same page.  I thank God for that moment.  I know that she was sure of my desire for Sophie, she never needed to doubt whether or not I was ready for a third. She knew I was with her. We had peace.  I still do.

Marriage is hard.  Decisions are big.  Trials are inevitable.  I pray that you will be able to see your spouse/significant other for who they really are.  See their heart, their soul, their dreams.  I pray that you will be able to be honest with each other and with yourselves so that those decisions can be made in the trust that love deserves.  Real love is about the decision to be honest with each other and work to honor each other in the complexities of life.

Thanks for reading if you finished this and aren't still watching Bad Lip Readings...

Blue Like Jazz

I read so much in the months after Krista passed away and felt like I learned so much, and really examined my doubts and clarified some things as best I could.  I slowed down a bit the last couple of years and really tapered off the reading in the last 6 months (which I am not to proud of...) but have been doing more of it lately.  I love Donald Miller's writing.  Here is an excerpt from Chapter 11 of his book Blue Like Jazz which I am currently re-reading.  It's about Don sharing his faith in Jesus Christ with others:

     "When I was in Sunday School as a kid, my teacher put a big poster on the wall that was shaped in a circle like a target.  She had us write names of people we knew who weren't Christians on little pieces of paper, and she pinned the names to the outer circle of the target.  She said our goal, by the end of the year, was to move those names from the outer ring of the circle, which represented their distance from knowing Jesus, to the inner ring, which represented them having come into a relationship with Jesus.  I thought the strategy was beautiful because it gave us a goal, a visual.

     I didn't know any people who weren't Christians, but I was a child with a fertile imagination so I made up some names; Thad Thatcher was one and William Wonka was another.  My teacher didn't believe me which I took as an insult, but nonetheless, the class was excited the very next week when both Thad and William had become Christians in a dramatic conversion experience that included the dismantling of a large satanic cult and underground drug ring.  There was also levitation involved.

     Even though they didn't exist, Thad and William were the only people to become Christians all year.  Nobody else I knew became a Christian for a very long time, mostly because I didn't tell anybody about Jesus except when I was drunk at a party, and that was only because so many of my reservations were down, and even then nobody understood me because I was either crying or slurring my words.

When I moved downtown to attend Imago-Dei, the church Rick started, he was pretty serious about loving people regardless of whether they considered Jesus the Son of God or not, and Rick wanted to love them because they were either hungry, thirsty, or lonely.  The human struggle bothered Rick, as if something was broken in the world and we were supposed to hold our palms against the wound.  He didn't really see evangelism, or whatever you want to call it, as a target on a wall in which the goal is to get people to agree with us about the meaning of life.  He saw evangelism as reaching a felt need.  I thought this was beautiful and frightening.  I thought it was beautiful because I had this same need; I mean I knew I needed Jesus like I need water or food, and yet it was frightening because Christianity is so stupid to so much of our culture, and I absolutely hate bothering people with the stuff.

     So much of me believes strongly in letting everybody live their own lives, and when I share my faith, I feel like a network marketing guy trying to build my down line.

     Some of my friends who aren't Christians think that Christians are insistent an demanding and intruding, but that isn't the case.  Those folks are the squeaky wheel.  Most Christians have enormous respect for the space and freedom of others; it is only that they have found a joy in Jesus that they want to share.  There is the tension.

     In a recent radio interview I was sternly asked by the host, who did not consider himself a Christian, to defend Christianity.  I told him that I couldn't do it, and moreover, that I didn't want to defend the term.  He asked me if I was a Christian, and I told him yes.  "Then why don't you want to defend Christianity?" he asked, confused.  I told him I no longer knew what the term meant.  Of the hundreds of thousands of people listening to his show that day, some of them had terrible experiences with Christianity; they may have been yelled at by a teacher in a Christian school, abused by a minister, or browbeaten by a Christian parent.  To them, the term Christianity meant something that no Christian I know would defend.  By fortifying the term, I am only making them more and more angry.  I won't do it.  Stop ten people on the street and ask them what they think of when they hear the word Christianity, and they will give you ten different answers.  How can I defend a term that means ten different things to ten different people?  I told the radio show hos that I would rather talk about Jesus and how I came to believe that Jesus exists and that he likes me.  The host looked back at me with tears in his eyes.  When we were done, he asked me if we could go get lunch together.  He told me how much he didn't like Christianity but how he had always wanted to believe that Jesus was the Son of God.

     For me, the beginning of sharing my faith with people began by throwing out Christianity and embracing Christian spirituality, a nonpolitical mysterious system that can be experienced but not explained.  Christianity, unlike Christian spirituality, was not a term that excited me.  And I could not in good conscience tell a friend about a faith that didn't excite me.  I couldn't share something I wasn't experiencing.  And I wasn't experiencing Christianity.  It didn't do anything for me at all.  If felt like math, like a system of rights and wrongs and political beliefs, but it wasn't mysterious; it wasn't God reaching out of heaven to do wonderful things in my life.  And if I would have shared Christianity with somebody, it would have felt mostly like I was trying to to get somebody to agree with me rather than meet God.  I could no longer share anything about Christianity, but I loved talking about Jesus and the spirituality that goes along with a relationship with Him."

I love how he puts this stuff.  If you are a person who has committed their life to learning about what it`s like to have a relationship with Christ and have never read Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, you should.  If you are someone who has questions about Christianity (Christian Spirituality) I really think this book delves into a lot of the questions and doubts people have about it.  I just love the book.  Just love it.